The hydrangeas hang their faded bluish heads—
my dozing mother, chin on her chest.
The shade is sweet—I sit. It’s too hot to claim
I have too much to do. A goldfinch
flickers in a purple billow of Russian sage.
Orioles bury their beaks in grape jam.
She heaves herself up, pushes her walker
along the porch, sits again. My mind churns—
we want and want. A UPS truck lumbers in.
The driver nods, drops a box, drives off.
When I was a kid, she was strong and brave.
A car rumbles by on the dirt road, a dog barks.
I’m the mother now. It’s too late to bring up
old hurts—still, this childish twinge. The sun
inches west, an osprey flies low overhead—clutching
a little fish, doggedly pumping its wings.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 28, Issue 2.
Jennifer Stewart Miller is the author of Thief (2021), winner of the 2020 Grayson Books Poetry Prize, A Fox Appears: A Biography of a Boy in Haiku (2015), and a chapbook, The Strangers Burial Ground (Seven Kitchens Press 2020). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology, and have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, RHINO, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. Her first published poem appeared in Cider Press Review.
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